Overview of the Fight
The encounter against Ultraxion is a single phase encounter, the difficulty of which increases over time. The fight has both a hard and a soft enrage timer, ensuring that close to or at the 6 minute mark, your raid will unavoidably wipe.

The encounter does not present any complicated mechanics, although it does contain two very punishing abilities, which must be dealt with perfectly each time. Additionally, the fight requires a tank switch as well as a strong amount of AoE healing. For the whole duration of the fight, the boss and the raid will remain stationary.

The five Aspects (Alexstrasza, Ysera, Kalecgos, Nozdormu and Thrall) offer various buffs to your raid, during the encounter. The encounter is triggered by talking to Thrall.

Twilight Realm and Heroic Will

The encounter takes place in two realms: the Twilight Realm and the Normal Realm. Both of these realms are just regular realms. They do not give particular buffs/debuffs or anything of that sort. For the vast majority of the encounter, the raid will be within the Twilight Realm. Raid members will only need to enter the Normal Realm when they have to avoid specific abilities that Ultraxion uses. This occurs several times during the fight.

The only way to exit the Twilight Realm is by using the Heroic Will ability. This is an encounter specific ability, that appears on your screen in the form of a special action bar.

Heroic Will has a 5 second cooldown and has no resource cost. It is off the Global Cooldown and it can be used even while you are casting or channeling another spell. Using Heroic Will has no beneficial effects. It merely removes you from the Twilight Realm for 5 seconds (as we said, this is useful for avoiding certain mechanics). During those 5 seconds, you are unable to perform any action whatsoever (deal damage, heal or even move).

This ability can be keybound from the Key Bindings Menu (it is called ExtraActionButton1 and it is located in the Action Bar Functions section). The button may not display properly (or at all) if you are using any action bar add-ons, although this does not affect the aforementioned key-binding’s efficiency. Alternatively, you can use the following macro:

/click ExtraActionButton1

Clicking this macro (which, of course, can be keybound), has the same effect as clicking the Heroic Will button.

Ultraxion’s Abilities

Ultraxion has the following abilities:

Hour of Twilight deals 300,000 unresistable Shadow damage to every player in the Twilight Realm. Ultraxion casts this ability every 45 seconds. There is an emote warning players about it in advance and giving them enough time to react. Players will need to use Heroic Will to exit the Twilight Realm just as this ability is about to be cast. Right after Ultraxion has cast this ability, players in the Normal Realm are automatically brought back to the Twilight Realm. In 10-man difficulty, at least 1 player must remain within the Twilight Realm and take damage from this ability, otherwise the raid will instantly wipe. In 25-man, 3 players must do the same.

Fading Light is a debuff that Ultraxion places on the current tank and one random DPS player in 10-man difficulty and 3 random DPS players in 25-man difficulty, that lasts 10 seconds and instantly causes their death when it expires, if they are still in the Twilight Realm. If the players are in the Normal Realm when the debuff expires (thanks to Heroic Will), they will be returned to the Twilight Realm, their threat will be reset and they will be unable to generate any threat for 10 seconds. Ultraxion begins casting this ability after the first Hour of Twilight, and he will always cast Fading Light twice in the 45 second interval between two Hour of Twilight casts.

Unstable Monstrosity causes Ultraxion to deal a high amount of Shadow damage, split between all players within 30 yards who are in the Twilight Realm. He initially casts this ability every 6 seconds, but every minute that elapses in the encounter reduces the interval between casts by 1 second. Thus, before the fight is over, Ultraxion will be casting Unstable Monstrosity every second, constituting a soft enrage mechanics.

Twilight Eruption is Ultraxion’s hard enrage. After 6 minutes, he will explode, killing not only himself in the process, but also wiping the raid.

Twilight Burst causes Ultraxion to deal a huge amount of Shadow damage each second to every player in the raid if there is no player within his melee range. Additionally, he will increase the amount of magic damage taken by all players by 50% (stacking) with each tick, quickly causing a wipe.

Buffs Provided by The Aspects

The five aspects provide various buffs to your raid. Thrall buffs your tanks, Alexstrasza, Ysera and Kalecgos buff your healers and Nozdormu buffs your entire raid. These buffs are given to your raid at different times during the fight, and we will present them in the order in which they appear.

Thrall’s Buff

At the start of the fight, Thrall will permanently buff all tanks with Last Defender of Azeroth. This reduces the cooldown of all their defensive cooldowns by 50% and increases their duration by 100%.

Currently, it appears as though the game detects tanks by the presence of their tanking “stance” ( Blood Presence for Death Knights, Bear Form for Druids, Righteous Fury for Paladins and Defensive Stance for Warriors), meaning that a large number of raid members can gain the buff by switching to these stances at the start of the encounter.

Alexstrasza, Ysera and Kalecgos’ Buffs

The healing buffs are given to the raid with the following timings:

Gift of Life (red) is provided by Alexstrasza, about 1 and a half minutes into the encounter. It increases all healing done by 100%.

Essence of Dreams (green) is provided by Ysera, about 2 and a half minutes into the encounter. It causes each heal cast by the player to also heal the entire raid for the same amount (the healing done to the raid is split evenly among all raid members).

Source of Magic (blue) is provided by Kalecgos, about 3 and a half minutes into the encounter. It reduces mana cost of all spells by 75% and increases spell haste by 100%.

When an aspect provides the raid with one of these buffs, corresponding crystals (1 in 10-man difficulty and 2 in 25-man and LFR difficulties) are created on the platform at fixed locations. Healers, and only healers, have the ability to right-click a crystal and gain the corresponding buff. Each healer can only gain a single one of these buffs. Each buff lasts until the end of the encounter and persists through death (if the healer is resurrected in combat). In either difficulty setting, all healers should be benefitting from one buff by the end of the encounter.

Nozdormu’s Buff

5 minutes into the fight, Nozdormu buffs your raid with Timeloop. This buff prevents players from dying, once. The first killing blow that they receive will instead heal them to 100% of their health and remove the Timeloop buff.

Strategy

The strategy for the Ultraxtion encounter is very simple, and can be summarised thus:

Stack up and heal through the constant raid damage.

Ensure that players affected by Fading Light use Heroic Will at the right time.

Ensure that everyone (except for the designated soakers) uses Heroic Will when Hour of Twilight is being cast.

Designate players (1 in 10-man and 3 in 25-man) to survive each Hour of Twilight within the Twilight Realm

Ensure that your healers are maximising the buffs granted by the dragon Aspects.

Positioning

Ultraxion is stationary for the entire duration of the encounter and cannot be attacked from behind. To compensate for this, he cannot parry attacks. At least one player must always be in melee range of Ultraxion, otherwise he will unleash a highly damaging, raid-wide AoE attack that will most likely wipe you.

As shown on the screenshot on the left, your raid should stack close to the base of the stairs and not next to the boss. This will not trigger Twilight Burst as Ultraxion has a massive hitbox. Such a position will ensure that the healers spend as little time as possible getting to the crystals for receiving their buff. Stacking makes AoE healing most efficient and no one in the raid (except the healers once per fight) should ever have to move.

Dealing with Hour of Twilight

Hour of Twilight is the most important ability of the encounter. It happens roughly every 45 seconds and has the potential of instantly killing your raid members each time. There are two components of this ability that your raid needs to take into account:

Having everyone exit the Twilight Realm before the ability is cast;
Having the required number of players remain in the Twilight Realm.

Exiting the Twilight Realm

Hour of Twilight is a 5 second cast, and Heroic Will has a 5 second duration. Therefore, as long as players use Heroic Will after the cast for Hour of Twilight has started, they should have no problem avoiding it.

Soaking Hour of Twilight

At least 1 player in 10-man difficulty and 3 players in 25-man difficulty must be inside the Twilight Realm when Hour of Twilight is cast, or else the aspects are killed and your raid instantly wipes. In LFR difficulty, this requirement does not exist and everyone can (and should) leave the Twilight Realm.

In 10-man raids, it will generally be most efficient if one of the tanks handles this ability. In 25-man raids, 3 players will have to soak Hour of Twilight each time. In addition to tanks (using defensive cooldowns), your raid can opt for Shadow Priests using Dispersion; Fire Mages with Cauterize; Priests using Guardian Spirit on any player and Death Knights using Anti-Magic Shell and Icebound Fortitude.

Finally, if you truly have no other survival options for soaking Hour of Twilight, you can simply let a player die inside the Twilight Realm and resurrect them afterwards.

Dealing with Fading Light

Fading Light is a debuff that Ultraxion places on the current tank and a number of random DPS players (1 in 10-man and 3 in 25-man difficulty). Ultraxion always casts Fading Light twice in the interval between two successive Hour of Twilight casts. He does not cast Fading Light at all until after the first Hour of Twilight has been cast.

The debuff has a 10 second duration. At the end of this time, the affected player will either be instantly killed (if they are still in the Twilight Realm) or they will be brought back in the Twilight Realm (if they are in the Normal Realm). Naturally, no one should ever die to this ability. Players should always be aware of their debuffs, and when they are affected by Fading Light, they will need to use Heroic Will when there are less than 5 seconds remaining on the debuff.

The second component of the ability is that, for 10 seconds after the debuff expires, the player will not generate any threat. This is important for the tank, who gets targeted by the ability each time. It means that the other tank will have to taunt and tank Ultraxion for the 10 second duration. The best time to taunt is as soon as the debuff is applied to the current tank. The alternative (taunting after the current tank has used Heroic Will) presents too high a risk that a DPS player will be meleed to death.

Fading Light is cast twice, shortly before each Hour of Twilight cast except the first one.

Assign the Healing Buffs

You should be using 3 healers for this encounter in 10-man and 6 healers in 25-man and LFR. This means that all of your healers should be covered by one of the buffs available. Healing in the encounter is increasingly difficult, and quite brutal at the very end, so making use of these buffs is not optional.

Red Buff

Gift of Life provides a 100% increase to all the healing done by the affected player(s). While this buff is excellent for any healer, we feel that it should not be taken by Holy Paladins and Discipline Priests. Holy Paladins heal for very high amounts with Divine Light (often overhealing), so having the amount of healing doubled would increase their overhealing even more. Discipline Priests would not get the full benefit of the buff, as it does not affect the amount absorbed by their shields

Green Buff

Essence of Dreams provides valuable AoE healing, which will prove extremely useful, especially as the encounter progresses. Note that this buff applies to most types of heals, including HoTs and AoE heals. Therefore, this buff should be taken by the healers who heal for the highest amount (due to gear or ability), who have not taken the red buff.

Blue Buff

Source of Magic provides increased casting haste and reduced mana cost, making it desirable to all healers. Every healer has large heals that take a long time to cast and eventually run them out of mana, and this is precisely in conjunction with this type of abilities that this buff should be used. It should be taken by any healers who have not yet received one of the previous two buffs.

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Ello, I'm Sumanhi. I play a Nelf resto druid on Dragonblight EU and a small arsenal of healer alts. I've been a resto since early Vanilla so it's pretty fair to assume I've healed a lot. A whole lot. And then some more. Topics on this blog can cover pretty much anything related to WoW and pie.